


(We Are All Eventually) The Victims Or The Victim's Family

by modernpatroclus



Series: Four Years Strong [5]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 4x10, 4x10 spec, Angst, Angst with a happy-ish ending, F/M, I'm not funny, I'm not sure what this is, but i went with it, it's oliver, post 4x09, upped the rating bc chapter two gets pretty darhk, what do you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 02:17:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5439749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modernpatroclus/pseuds/modernpatroclus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>4x10 spec-ish drabble: playing the Waiting Game in the hospital. Donna can't stand seeing her baby girl lying still and silent in her hospital bed anymore, or seeing Oliver looking so broken, so she heads down to the gift shop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The good thing about plastic flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys! This is just a short thing I thought of last night when I was listening to the song "Plastic Flowers" by The Front Bottoms, because most of my inspiration comes from music and it's relevant. It's pretty short.  
> Rated T because I use a bad word once, and I'd rather be safe.  
> Enjoy!

Donna Smoak stands in Starling General’s hospital gift shop, perusing its array of flowers. She just came down here so that she could get out of that hospital room.

It was starting to feel suffocating. Felicity was just lying there, more pale and still than Donna had ever seen her, her glasses sitting folded up on the small table after Oliver had finished fiddling with them for the first few hours. The heart monitor was the only thing making any noise, and though a few hours ago it’d been her favorite sound in the world after Felicity made it out of surgery, now the sound made Donna feel sick.

It was a constant reminder of the fact that, yes, the bullet was successfully removed, but now Felicity is in a coma that she may never wake up from.

And Oliver . . . he’s been sitting in that chair by her bed ever since Felicity got out of surgery. She can see him now in her mind’s eye, forehead pressed to their hands, both of his clutching her left. The glittering engagement ring looked out of place in the impersonal and sterile hospital room.

She had to get out of there, if only for a few minutes, before she broke down. And neither she nor Oliver could afford that. She was being strong for him, because she just sensed that he’s the kind of person who rarely lets himself break down. And Donna Smoak is nothing if not a good judge of character – well, except for her ex-husband. But hey, she was in love.

She absently touches a blue petal, half-turning to the sales clerk behind the register.

“What kind of flowers do you get for your daughter who’s just been shot and is in a coma she may never wake up from?”

To her own ears, Donna sounds more bitter than she’s ever heard herself, even after her husband left. Felicity was always the one who kept her going. Now, she doesn’t know what she’s going to do.

The salesperson shrugs and asks, “What’s their favorite color?”

The question takes Donna off guard in her weary, restless state. “What?”

He sighs, as if he has this conversation too often. “I’m gonna level with you, because you seem like a very nice, emotionally distraught woman. Those flowers are all sprayed with this,” and he flourishes a spray bottle, “generic perfume. So they all smell the same – and I don’t even like the smell, to tell you the truth; it’s a cheap cop-out, if you ask me. It's a good idea in theory, I guess. Saves money. Anyway, yeah. They’re all plastic, and they all smell the same. So what I recommend is to just go with the person’s favorite color.”

Donna doesn’t quite comprehend everything that he just told her. She’d started picturing Felicity lying in that damn hospital bed again.

She shakes her head and grabs the bouquet her hand had been hovering on, walking over to the register. Her heels echo in the room, and for once, she wishes she hadn’t worn them. She just wants to throw on some sweats and tennis shoes, like she’d worn the last time she’d come to visit, when the biggest problem had been that Felicity was having relationship doubts. It seemed like a lifetime ago now.

“I’ll get these, she loves,” and she pauses to look at the flowers that are shaking slightly in her trembling hand, “oh no, this is an ugly green.” She’d managed to pick up a bright, lime green that to her right now looked more like the color of vomit instead of a cheerful, spring green like the tag says. She turns back and deposits them haphazardly in the case before grabbing a much prettier dark green bouquet. “Here,” she says as she sets them on the counter, sounding breathless for some reason.

“Yeah, I don’t like those much either,” he says, gesturing with a head nod to the ones she’d just put back. “Now these are much better. They kind of remind me of the Green Arrow.”

Donna furrows her brow, at a loss as to what this guy is talking about.

“What’s that?”

The guy laughs and says, “Seriously? You’ve never heard of him?”

She shakes her head and pulls out some money. “Should I have? Is it a local thing? I’m not from here.”

The guy nods as he takes the money. “Yeah, he’s a vigilante for the city. Only been around for a few months, but personally, I think he’s the same guy as the Arrow. They say _he_ died, but there are too many similarities for me to buy it. They both shoot green arrows, they both have ‘Arrow’ in their names – which is so uncreative it’s almost laughable, okay – and they both gallivant around the city at night takin’ out bad guys. Plus, I don’t buy that a guy like him is that easy to kill.” He shrugs and hands her the change and gives the flowers an extra spray before giving them to her too.

“Thanks,” Donna says, taking them both. “Wow. A vigilante. Sounds like something we could use in Vegas – a couple, actually.”

“Oh, there’s a whole team of them now. Not sure how many.”

“Wow. Well, clearly you need it, considering what happened with my daughter last night.”

“Yeah, this isn’t the safest place to live. Never was, at least that I can remember. But it’s gotten worse.”

Donna sighs, sounding as tired as she feels. “She’d never move away again; I know how much she missed it. Maybe I need to stick around . . .” She shakes her head, trying to clear it, but it only makes her dizzy. “I don’t know. Thanks, though. Have a good day,” she says halfheartedly, walking out of the gift shop to go back upstairs and face what she was avoiding.


	2. You were mine for a night (I was out of my mind)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver has time alone to think while Donna's out of the room - _too_ much time. Just as he starts to slip back into that darkness of self-loathing and isolation, Donna comes back. Oliver should've known all he needed was some wise words from a Smoak to keep his head on straight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, here it is!  
> Again, what was supposed to be a hopeful dialogue between Donna and Oliver warped into something else when my fingers hit the keyboard. This is a follow-up to the first chapter where Donna has her own internal battle, but by no means do you need to read it to understand this. There is – finally – a conversation between Donna and Oliver near the end, but fair warning that it is mostly me pretending to know what’s going through Oliver’s head. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea (including my own, reader-wise). But I figured maybe someone (I hope!) will like it.  
> Chapter title comes from "Wrapped Around Your Finger" by 5 Seconds of Summer.

It seems a common theme with them, only getting one brief night together before everything goes to hell. His first ‘I love you’ to her, more real than she could have ever known at the time, before he let her believe it was a lie the next day on the beach; their first date, so perfect in spite of him not being able to pick her up at her doorstep beforehand, finally unburdening the depth of his feelings for her before it literally blew up on them; their first night together, passion and tension finally colliding after she allowed herself to let go and stopped denying _her_ true feelings for him, only to have it stolen by assassins with the dawn; and now, their engagement, their ecstasy still in its prime when the limo halted, and with it their future as the present rained down around them in bullets, the puddles made of her blood.

He was supposed to take her home.

He was supposed to take her home, and carry her over the threshold like the giant sap he becomes around her, for only her. And she was supposed to laugh the whole way, her head thrown back and her hair golden in the moonlight, the accompanying blush on her face making everything inside of him feel _warm._ They were supposed to celebrate their engagement, their new promise of forever despite the dangers waiting bringing enough bliss to carry them through the night, ready for whatever was to come in the morning.

Oliver presses his forehead harder against Felicity’s left hand clutched desperately in both of his. He can feel the engagement ring, so cold on her even colder hand, pressing into his skin, no doubt leaving a mark. The dull pain grounds him, lets him feel something other than the drowning _numbness_ he’d felt all night while waiting for her to get out of surgery.

Donna left a few minutes ago, to where he hadn’t even registered when she’d said. But he’s glad for the brief reprieve. It allows him to privately drown in his guilt.

 _My fault; it’s my fault_ is the mantra running through his head like a broken record. Everyone keeps telling him it’s not, even without him voicing the thought, because they all know where his thoughts run without Felicity there to hold him in place.

But it _is_ his fault, he knows it. _He_ revealed Darhk’s name to the world; _he_ ran for mayor; _he_ painted this target on her back. It was only a matter of time before the bullet found its mark.

 _It should’ve been me_ , he thinks for the thousandth time that morning, as if thinking it hard enough or hating himself enough will magically make it come true.

Why didn’t he get shot? He was on top of her, shielding her. Why did one manage to hit right _after_ he moved? Because the world has a cruel, sick sense of humor, that’s why.

That’s why the best person he’d ever known, who brought only light into his life despite the darkness in her own past, was the collateral damage in a war she had no business signing up for _,_ especially not on the front lines of.

But she was ready to fight out in the open, even with that damn target on her back, no matter what happened to her. Because that’s just who Felicity Smoak is: A fighter, a hero, a believer – in him, and that good will prevail in the end.

And oh, if she could hear his thoughts right now . . . He knew exactly what she’d say.

She’d tell him to pull his head out of his ass and stop trying to put all the blame on himself. That the weight of everyone’s choices was not his burden to carry, that they were all adults fully capable of handling themselves.

But she couldn’t tell him any of those things.

Because she was lying comatose in a hospital bed, machines keeping her alive while her nameless, faceless robotic killer proudly geared up for his or her next attack, probably unaware – and certainly uncaring – of all of the damage they wrought with a single bullet.

He hated Darhk; he hated everyone who so much as associated themselves with him; and above all, he hated himself for ever bringing his hell anywhere near her life, mundane as she thought it was before his crusade.

He’d have her sitting in an office behind a computer fixing people’s computer problems any day, safe and only wondering in the back of her mind if there was something missing in her life.

It was all his fault. He would gladly trade all of the happiness and light she brought into his life for her safety in an instant, even if it’d meant he’d still be that broken shell of a man he was when he’d first come back (because he hadn’t come home – not until he’d met her), even if it’d meant his own death a thousand times over because she was the brains, the heart, and the soul keeping him alive night after night.

Sure, he’d have had Diggle to keep him in line for a while. But it wouldn’t have been enough, the two of them blindly fumbling in their mutual darkness, Diggle with his brother and Oliver with _everything_ since getting on the Queen’s Gambit.

They’d have been missing the light Felicity brought without even knowing it, because they were both too goddamn stubborn to ask each other for help or even admit to themselves that they needed someone.

Eventually, he would have died on some mission or other, one careless mistake and his lack of a proper will to live being the final nail in his coffin. Because Felicity is what brought him back from that mountain nearly a year ago, against every single odd that told him he should have died.

His initial drive to right his father’s wrongs would have eventually burned out, turning into a desperate, angry death wish that would inevitably come true. And he’d have welcomed it with broken, bloody arms.

But she’d have been safe.

Oliver doesn’t hear the door open or the sound of heels on the tile floor, being too wrapped up in his own mind to even notice. But he feels a manicured hand on his shoulder, reaching through the numbness and pulling him out before he can drown.

His head whips up and he turns to find Donna looking down at him with empathy mixed with her own misery. He clears his throat before he speaks.

“You’re back. And you brought flowers,” and somehow, he feels the corner of his mouth lift in a ghost of a smile. “Nice color,” he notes, already picturing the grin Felicity will have when – _not_ if; he can’t afford that now, not with her mother watching him – she sees them.

Donna chuckles humorlessly and sets them on the little table next to Felicity’s bed before walking around it and sitting in the chair she’d vacated nearly an hour ago. She picks up Felicity’s right hand and idly traces patterns on it with her finger.

“Did you know they just spray these all with the same generic perfume? With as much money as these places roll in, you’d think they’d at least bring in some real flowers – or even bother to get a couple different scents.” She’s talking to distract them both, to make sure that the silence doesn’t return and engulf them both so that the only thing they can hear is that damn heart monitor.

“I didn’t know that,” he replies.

Normally, Oliver only has the patience for Felicity’s babbling. But as different as they swear they are, she and her mother have a lot in common. And it’s still comforting coming from Donna, so he’ll take it if it’ll keep him at least somewhat sane in his living nightmare.

“She’ll wake up. She’s strong – so much stronger than me,” Donna says, looking down at her daughter fondly, pushing her tangled hair back from her face.

“And me,” Oliver says. “I don’t know how she does it.”

“She had to be, growing up in the world that she did. Her father was her hero, and she was devastated when he left. He told her he’d be back, but she’s so smart. She didn’t believe him for a second,” Donna says, letting out a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “And I wasn’t around much either. I had to work all the time, and even when I was home she wanted nothing to do with me. She resented me, I think . . .” she trails off, staring unseeingly at Felicity’s hand.

“I’m sure that’s not true. She knew you were doing the best you could,” Oliver tries, not knowing what else to say.

“I know why she did. She was the spitting image of her father, and she followed him everywhere. She wanted to be just like him. But he betrayed her when he left. And suddenly I was all she had. But I was nothing like him.”

She breaks off again, choking on a sob that she doesn’t let turn into a breakdown. And then he knows what to say.

“You’re right: You’re nothing like him; you’re better. You could’ve left her too, or shut down and pushed her away, or blamed her. But you put her first, and she knows that. You’re who she gets her strength from,” Oliver says earnestly, looking up at her so that maybe she’ll believe it.

And then Donna does cry, but it’s not hopeless or angry. Instead, she smiles through her tears and reaches with her other hand for his and Felicity’s intertwined ones on the bed. “Thank you, Oliver. I’m so glad she met you. There’s no one else I’d rather have for a son-in-law.”

And despite his earlier thoughts that were just the opposite, Oliver lets himself believe her, if only for a minute. He lets himself believe that Felicity will be okay, and that they will make it through this together. She will live, and they will defeat Darhk, and then they can get married.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, um... _that_ happened...  
>  Let me know what you thought if you managed to read all my angsty rambling!

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've been wanting to write a 4x10 scene between Donna and Oliver. But I didn't actually write that part? I still want to, though. So that'll - hopefully - be up soon. (And I am working on a part two to "I'm Sorry," promise! I haven't forgotten.)  
> Thanks for reading! Comments make my day. :)


End file.
